This has not been a very French week. I realized that I'm France-deprived when Tim sent me this link today. Somehow I don't think I'll be trying out my online French to do these interesting things while I'm in Paris.
I'm looking longingly at My Life in France by Julia Child and Toujours, Provence, by Peter Mayle, both of which are lingering on my bedside table. I fall asleep every night with Edward and Alexandra by Richard Hough, because I'm determined that I am going to read it one more time before I give it away.
All of these books deserve their own posts, and hopefully, their times will come. I even have the amazing video series, A Year in Provence, waiting for me at the library. The incomparable Lindsay Duncan steals this series as Mayle's wife. Pretty soon, they will put it back on the shelves because I haven't picked it up. Note to self -- stop at library on way home from work tomorrow.
Oh, and did I mention that on Sunday I watched French Kiss, which I finally found at Blockbuster? Not my favorite movie, but the scenes in Paris and in the countryside are beautiful.
I'm going to have to be satisfied with putting dénouement on my Lit Test for tomorrow and leaving it at that until Friday night. Au revoir and go, Team Jacob. There's something very French about a werewolf in love.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
There is no sense in crying over spilt milk -- Sophocles
What do you do when a book is comes highly recommended and you read it and wish you had not invested the fifteen dollars in it? Do you question the taste of the recommender? Or do you search for something in yourself that missed the central core of the story? I've been struggling with French Milk by Lucy Knisley for weeks.
Okay -- so the source of the recommendation was a twenty-something associate at Borders Books and I'm not twenty-something. Perhaps that is the problem, but I usually enjoy the books that my daughter and her friends read. French Milk is the memoir of an Art Institute of Chicago student who spends five weeks in Paris with her mother. They rent a flat, enjoy the culture and food of France, and have a good time getting to know each other as adults. The title refers to the author's love affair with the full-fat milk that is served in France. Knisley is a cartoon artist, so the story is presented as a graphic diary. She's creative and witty, and her drawings are beautifully detailed, but I just wished there were more words!
According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer on Amazon.com, French Milk was originally self published and became a word-of-mouth hit that led to mainstream publication with Simon and Schuster. Given the popularity of graphic novels, Knisley hit the big time at the right time. Despite its cartoon format, it is primarily a travel diary. Lucy's schedule encourages the reader to invest leisurely time in Paris rather than trying to see it all in four days, as I plan to do. I know it's wrong, and I'm pretty sure I won't be satisfied with the whirlwind tour of Paris that's in my agenda this summer.
When I bought French Milk at Borders, I also bought The Hunger Games. The same associate told me that I HAD to buy the sequel as well since I was going to want to read it immediately after finishing Hunger Games. Now I'm worried that the sequel to Hunger Games won't be worth reading either. I've already heard from my friends that it's not as good as the first book, and I haven't been clamoring to get it back from the friend I lent it to. I guess the moral to this story is to use my public library first.
Does anyone want to borrow French Milk? I own it.
Okay -- so the source of the recommendation was a twenty-something associate at Borders Books and I'm not twenty-something. Perhaps that is the problem, but I usually enjoy the books that my daughter and her friends read. French Milk is the memoir of an Art Institute of Chicago student who spends five weeks in Paris with her mother. They rent a flat, enjoy the culture and food of France, and have a good time getting to know each other as adults. The title refers to the author's love affair with the full-fat milk that is served in France. Knisley is a cartoon artist, so the story is presented as a graphic diary. She's creative and witty, and her drawings are beautifully detailed, but I just wished there were more words!
According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer on Amazon.com, French Milk was originally self published and became a word-of-mouth hit that led to mainstream publication with Simon and Schuster. Given the popularity of graphic novels, Knisley hit the big time at the right time. Despite its cartoon format, it is primarily a travel diary. Lucy's schedule encourages the reader to invest leisurely time in Paris rather than trying to see it all in four days, as I plan to do. I know it's wrong, and I'm pretty sure I won't be satisfied with the whirlwind tour of Paris that's in my agenda this summer.
When I bought French Milk at Borders, I also bought The Hunger Games. The same associate told me that I HAD to buy the sequel as well since I was going to want to read it immediately after finishing Hunger Games. Now I'm worried that the sequel to Hunger Games won't be worth reading either. I've already heard from my friends that it's not as good as the first book, and I haven't been clamoring to get it back from the friend I lent it to. I guess the moral to this story is to use my public library first.
Does anyone want to borrow French Milk? I own it.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
What is a veteran?
Today I experienced something amazing. Six hundred students stood quietly while six military veterans presented a new flag to our school and set it at half-mast. Most of those students do not personally know anyone who serves in the military, but they seemed to understand what import our veterans and our volunteer military deserves. Even when we do not agree with the aggressive stance our country takes in the world, we can still honor those who risk their lives and give up time with their families to serve our country. We wore badges all day honoring veterans and active duty military people that we knew. Daddy -- if only you knew how many kids wore your name today and honored your service.
This poem was read at our commemoration. Perhaps you know a person serving on active duty or a veteran and want to say, "Thank you" to him or her on November 11.
Some veterans bear visible signs of their service...a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.
Others may carry the evidence inside them...a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg...or perhaps another sort of inner steel... the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity.
Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem.
You can't tell a vet just by looking. What is a vet?
He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.
He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.
She or he is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.
He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn't come back at all.
He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines and teaching them to watch each other's backs.
He is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.
He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.
He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.
He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly slow who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.
He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being - a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.
He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.
He is the beggar on the street corner, holding up a piece of cardboard with the scribbling, "Help a Vet, HUNGRY!"
So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded. Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU"!
Monday, November 9, 2009
A rosé by any other name
Apparently rosé wines are all the rage and I've been living under a rock, feeling supercilious about my pink wine-drinking friends. Rosés have been gaining in popularity and after a depressing time in the 80s and 90s, the new millennium has seen a rebirth in the popularity of pink wine. Admittedly, my sources were initially limited to Rick Steves and Jamie Ivey, but as with most of the digressions of my life, I ended up researching rosé wine prior to writing this post.
I was watching the Rick Steves’ travel videos about France and in one of the towns he has lunch with a friend. He says that he enjoys the fine rosé wines of the region for lunch because they are dry, crisp, and best served quite cold. It was intriguing to me because my relationships with pink wines have come from Mateus rosé during college, California white zinfandel (use it up while it's still young), and more recently, pink champagne. During last spring’s trip to Sonoma, I bought three bottles of pink sparkling wine from Schug Carneros Winery. Although enjoyable, none of these wines would make it to my top ten.
I realized that one of the travel books I had checked out from the library was called Extremely Pale Rosé: A Very French Adventure, by Jamie Ivey. I was deep into eighth grade student journals, but Rosé kept calling my name. I didn’t give in, and finished Hunger Games (a YA science fiction) for book club instead, but when Friday arrived, I was ready to dive into a barrel of rosé. I read this excellent book all weekend, and although I’m not quite done with it, I know that it is safe to recommend to both armchair travelers and those among you who like wine. It’s well-written, witty, has lovely descriptions of French scenery and culture, and best of all, may lure you into trying some new wine.
The search for the palest rosé in France was the story line of the Ivey book, and it kept me asking questions about winemaking and ruefully considering my lack of fluency in the French language. I learned that the French vignerons are very snooty (what else is new?) about their wines, and many don’t even consider rosés to be an acceptable type of wine. They are, however, quick to compare their method of making rosé to the California version. All grape juice is essentially clear, but wines are colored and flavor is added by the amount of time a wine spends soaking with the skins. Very dark wines have lots of color from the purple and red grape skins and white wines from contact with the green or yellow skins (or no skins at all). French rosés are made by essentially dying the wine through contact with the red grape skins, but the contact time with rosés may be as little as a few hours. The amount of time the wine is with the grape skins also affects the tannin content of the wine. Some California blush wines are created by just mixing red and white together to form pink, but the white zinfandel process is similar to that of the French.
Since the North Forty was going to a BYOB Mediterranean restaurant called the Couscous House on Saturday night, I thought this might be a fun place to try a French rosé to see if it would hold up to the strong flavors of Algerian cuisine. I went to the local liquor store and found that there were only four bottles of French rosé available. I chose the cheaper one ($8.99) just in case it
was terrible, and went off to Chicago armed with two bottles of my Printemps D’Eulalie.
To make a long story short, some of us enjoyed the rosé and some didn’t. My Riesling-loving friend liked it, but my die-hard red wine friends did not. It was light, a little dry, and held up nicely to my meal. It didn’t hurt that my new friend Omar chose an amazing entrée for me that was not even on his menu. It was kind of like an Algerian chimichanga – shredded roasted chicken and raisin couscous mixed together in a luscious curry sauce and then put in a phyllo covering, deep fried, and garnished with confectioners’ sugar. The rosé wine was the perfect foil for this dish.
I highly recommend Couscous House if you want a Chicago neighborhood restaurant with good food that is a great value. I enjoyed both Hunger Games and Extremely Pale Rosé for different reasons, and I think I will go back to the liquor store and try the more expensive rosé that I didn’t buy on Saturday. I know I enjoyed this little French wine detour we took, so join me in trying some rosé from your local supplier and read Extremely Pale Rosé for a pleasurable romp through France’s vineyards. Bon voyage!
I was watching the Rick Steves’ travel videos about France and in one of the towns he has lunch with a friend. He says that he enjoys the fine rosé wines of the region for lunch because they are dry, crisp, and best served quite cold. It was intriguing to me because my relationships with pink wines have come from Mateus rosé during college, California white zinfandel (use it up while it's still young), and more recently, pink champagne. During last spring’s trip to Sonoma, I bought three bottles of pink sparkling wine from Schug Carneros Winery. Although enjoyable, none of these wines would make it to my top ten.
I realized that one of the travel books I had checked out from the library was called Extremely Pale Rosé: A Very French Adventure, by Jamie Ivey. I was deep into eighth grade student journals, but Rosé kept calling my name. I didn’t give in, and finished Hunger Games (a YA science fiction) for book club instead, but when Friday arrived, I was ready to dive into a barrel of rosé. I read this excellent book all weekend, and although I’m not quite done with it, I know that it is safe to recommend to both armchair travelers and those among you who like wine. It’s well-written, witty, has lovely descriptions of French scenery and culture, and best of all, may lure you into trying some new wine.
The search for the palest rosé in France was the story line of the Ivey book, and it kept me asking questions about winemaking and ruefully considering my lack of fluency in the French language. I learned that the French vignerons are very snooty (what else is new?) about their wines, and many don’t even consider rosés to be an acceptable type of wine. They are, however, quick to compare their method of making rosé to the California version. All grape juice is essentially clear, but wines are colored and flavor is added by the amount of time a wine spends soaking with the skins. Very dark wines have lots of color from the purple and red grape skins and white wines from contact with the green or yellow skins (or no skins at all). French rosés are made by essentially dying the wine through contact with the red grape skins, but the contact time with rosés may be as little as a few hours. The amount of time the wine is with the grape skins also affects the tannin content of the wine. Some California blush wines are created by just mixing red and white together to form pink, but the white zinfandel process is similar to that of the French.
Since the North Forty was going to a BYOB Mediterranean restaurant called the Couscous House on Saturday night, I thought this might be a fun place to try a French rosé to see if it would hold up to the strong flavors of Algerian cuisine. I went to the local liquor store and found that there were only four bottles of French rosé available. I chose the cheaper one ($8.99) just in case it
was terrible, and went off to Chicago armed with two bottles of my Printemps D’Eulalie.To make a long story short, some of us enjoyed the rosé and some didn’t. My Riesling-loving friend liked it, but my die-hard red wine friends did not. It was light, a little dry, and held up nicely to my meal. It didn’t hurt that my new friend Omar chose an amazing entrée for me that was not even on his menu. It was kind of like an Algerian chimichanga – shredded roasted chicken and raisin couscous mixed together in a luscious curry sauce and then put in a phyllo covering, deep fried, and garnished with confectioners’ sugar. The rosé wine was the perfect foil for this dish.
I highly recommend Couscous House if you want a Chicago neighborhood restaurant with good food that is a great value. I enjoyed both Hunger Games and Extremely Pale Rosé for different reasons, and I think I will go back to the liquor store and try the more expensive rosé that I didn’t buy on Saturday. I know I enjoyed this little French wine detour we took, so join me in trying some rosé from your local supplier and read Extremely Pale Rosé for a pleasurable romp through France’s vineyards. Bon voyage!
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